I did not really watch the Super Bowl today. The Saints won. I guess that's good. I did go to the grocery store, however, and it is amazing to go shopping when no one else is there. And, yet, I also seem completely incapable of going to Andronico's and not spending almost $100. Oh well. At least I have food for another 10 days or so.

I also have been experimenting with tasty food. Here is some stir fried vegetables I threw together a few days back.

So, this week was pretty much exhausting. It started off with Monday night shenanigans. Armando and Scott were in town and, for reasons which are hard to explain, we ended up planting a Christmas Tree in the beach. Tuesday was a work day followed by the arrival of a mess of Lindens from around the world. This, of course, resulted in many, various and sundry excuses to celebrate and, rather unfortunately, ended up with a stop at 21st Amendment. Now, make no mistake, I like 21st Amendment.

I had grand plans of going shopping in order to prepare for our upcoming office party. I am unsure whether I should be super fancy, night-out casual, mission hipster casual, or interview formal without looking like I'm going to an interview. And I am receiving zero guidance. To add to my troubles I decided to pay bills and balance my checkbook today. And it turns out I don't have money to go buy fancy clothes that are perfect for any occasion. Whatever. I didn't want to go downtown anyway. Though I do need new socks...

Health Insurance in the country is a joke. Even when you have insurance (as I do), you still have to jump through countless bureaucratic hurdles. Anyway, my employer recently changed insurance providers. Unfortunately, I have an outstanding series of prescriptions that I really need to get filled. Now, I technically have insurance but neither my clinic nor my pharmacy knows that. Now, I will tell them tomorrow but it is just irritating that I have to, especially when my damn prescriptions need to be refilled. And so I am currently grumpy.

I have to admit, I just love Christmas. I love the parties, the festivities, the pomp, the circumstance, the general feeling of good tidings. But, moreover, I love the festoonery. The world looks better during Christmas. Bows, ribbons, blinking lights and smiling faces; street musicians dusting off their holiday hymns, and the seasonal warm drinks. It puts me, a person known, perhaps, for being in an otherwise dark spirit, in a good mood.

I have to thank my friend Karen from Berkeley for sending this link my way. I don't know what to think about Lady GaGa. On one hand, her songs are rather catchy. On the other, she's completely ridiculous. But an a-capella rendition of pokerface is just entirely too awesome.

My site has been down for a long time. I know this. Let me explain. It all started way back when I first converted to running Linux as my main desktop OS. I did this because I was hit by a nasty variant of the Gumblar virus. Well, about 6 weeks ago I got hit again, which required me to shutter my site and change a bunch of user credentials, and, well, then I just never got around to getting my site up. And then I did. And then there was a drupal update. So I brought my site down again. And then I finally got around to updating it last night.

Dexter. God I love that show. It is one of the very few shows on TV right now that will completely hold my attention. For those not in the know, Dexter follows the adventures of Dexter Morgan, serial killer and blood splatter analyst for the Miami-Dade police department. Season 4 started tonight. There were a few murders and one naked John Lithgow. I'm not sure which was more horrific.

So, yeah, we've been trying to do this scrum thing. I'll cut to the chase and piss off some libertarians at the same time. Basically it's like this: scrum is like libertarianism; it's a great way to to live your life, but it just doesn't scale well. The biggest problem I see is this: for a team of 3-5 a number of the practices of scrum make sense. Make a list of what needs to be done for the next 2-3 weeks. Great idea! Meet every day for 15 minutes to make sure you're on track. Ok! Well, every day seems a bit much, but I can deal.

Thursday night was a night of much celebration. Work threw a party to celebrate the big release we managed to get out despite our best efforts (I did my part by throwing my birthday bash the night before our early morning release.). Let me just say this, an open bar is an extremely dangerous thing. Also, given the enthusiasm that my coworkers and I can attack a bar, I'm very curious to know how much Thursday's shindig cost. It was held at The Cigar Bar in North Beach in San Francisco.

Boy howdy.